Margot Fonteyn's Sleeping Beauty costume designed by Oliver Messel for the reopening of Covent Garden after the war. Photograph: Sarah Lee

Another fine Messel

When the Oscar-nominated theatre designer Oliver Messel went to live in Barbados in 1965, he arranged with his pals Princess Margaret and Lord Snowden, married at the time, that a selection of his designs would go on show in the Old Chapel at Kensington Palace. After the influential designer's death the royal collection was stored in the V&A, who bought it from Snowdon and began to catalogue the pieces. Now I hear that, from September, Messel fans and all those curious about this celebrated talent, can visit a new exhibition of his lavish work at the Rosehill Theatre in Cumbria. The show, marking the 50th anniversary of the theatre in Whitehaven, will be the largest of Messel's designs since 1983 and many items will be on view for the first time. "It not only offers a rare insight into Messel's working practices but also covers his career beyond the theatre, in film, interior design and architecture," says Keith Lodwick, V&A curator Theatre and Performance.

The theatre was chosen because in 1959 Messel designed its "rose red silk-line jewel box" of an interior on invitation from Rosehill's creator, Sir Nicholas Sekers. If you can't get to Cumbria then the Oliver Messel Suite in London's Dorchester Hotel will give you the opulent flavour of the man and, if you can wait a bit longer, the V&A is launching its Messel collection online soon.

Space to sound off

David Byrne gave one of the best concerts of the year so far at the Royal Festival Hall in April, but in a fortnight the former Talking Heads frontman is to go one bigger, if not one better, by actually "playing a venue" in a very literal sense. On August 7 the musician and general avant gardeist will be here to premiere his interactive sound installation, Playing the Building, at the Roundhouse in North London.

The circular, domed concert space will be converted into a giant musical instrument and members of the public will be invited to play. Crazy, Grammy-winning Dave will set an old pump organ will at the centre of the building attached to a series of cables and wires. The metal beams, pillars and pipes of Grade II listed Roundhouse will then "vibrate, resonate and oscillate".

"Typical parts of buildings can be used to produce interesting sounds. Everyone is familiar with the fact that if you rap on a metal column, for example, you will hear a ping or a clang, but I wondered if the pipes could be turned into giant flutes, and if a machine could make girders vibrate and produce tones," Byrne says.

His idea was presented last year to great acclaim at New York's Battery Maritime Building and before that at Färgfabriken in Stockholm in 2005.

Bragg-time

Speaking to me last week in the run up to his BBC One films about the state of culture in a time of economic crisis, Art in Troubled Times, Alan Yentob commented in passing on the demise of the Imagine arts strand's longer standing rival, ITV1's The South Bank Show, and on the television future of its veteran host Melvyn Bragg. He was very sad, he said, about the programme going, but said that Bragg will be fine. He pointed out that Lord Bragg already works for BBC Radio 4, presenting In Our Time, and said he is already talking to Janice Hadlow, controller of BBC2, about other projects, although not necessarily to do with the arts. Interestingly, when Jay Hunt, controller of BBC1, was asked at a recent Soho lunch if Bragg would be coming to her channel, she rolled her eyes and said: "But who would tell Alan?"

A game old boy

Those frightened by the memory of former Thatcher hardman Norman Tebbit, fears perhaps underlined by Spitting Image's portrayal of him as a biker with S&M tendencies, would be shocked to know that guests at his London home may well have found a carcass hanging from the shower curtain rail if they were called upon to visit the bathroom. The former cabinet member's explanation, though still a touch macabre, may help. It can be found on a page headed, Roast Haunch of Venison, in a new cook book from the former minister, titled The Game Cook: Recipes inspired by a conversation in my butcher's shop. "When I was a minister in Margaret Thatcher's Government, ministers were, from time to time, offered a haunch from the deer culled in the Royal Parks, an offer I could not bring myself to refuse even though the only place to hang it in our London home was the bathroom." The former MP for Chingford will be appearing today at The Game Fair at Belvoir Castle near Thatcher's old constituency of Grantham in Leicestershire.

Figgis on the horn

Not content with filming the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square for the Sky Arts documentary, Mike Figgis, director of Leaving Las Vegas, went on the plinth as himself, although somewhat incognito, at 10am on Wednesday 22. He appeared as a stand-in for a 'no-show' and spent his hour playing the trumpet and reading out his favourite jokes, as well as doing some filming. The director is a friend of Antony Gormley and had joined the list of those who agreed to step in for volunteers who did not appear on time. So, unlike me, Figgis did not have to enter the online draw. Nor did he go up in a wig and a dress like me. There is still time for others to enter the August draw for places on the plinth in September and October.